How to keeping bow top knotch?

[mschmidt]

I am trying to find out what I need to do to make sure that my bow is at it's best performing level at all times. What are some of the things I should be looking at to see if my bows components are all working well?

[BGfisher]

One of the first things you do is get good aftermarket strings and cables on the bow. Winner's Choice, Vapor Trail, Prostrings and others are the ticket. They are prestretched and twisted, served under tension. After 20-50 shots they are settled in and will not change till you replace them.

After you get them shot in and the bow tweaked for drawlngth and tuned well you should take several measurements, write them down, and store them for reference. Brace height, axle-to-axle, peak weight, tiller top and bottom limbs (does not have to be the same), nocking point height in reference to the rest, kisser and peep height above the nocking point. Another good thing to do is mark the side of the cam with a pencil where it passes through the limbs. This can show you if you have any string creep or otherwise a change in cam rotation, although with good ones it should not be an issue.

Depending on who made your bow you can bet the strings are only good enough to hold the bow together till you replace them. They will creep until the day you get rid of them. The drawlength will increase, bow weight goes up, and the bow will constantly change it's tune. It'll be a slow process so you won't see it till the thing just isn't shooting right anymore and you pull your hair out trying to figure out why.

Other than that you don't have to do much with today's bows. Use alcohol to clean the cable rod once in a while, and while your at it replace the slide with a Teflon one like Simm's makes.

If you have bearing in the wheels you do not need to lube them. If you got bushings then a drop of lube is needed once in a while (couple times a year). Use something with Teflon, graphite or silicon in it, Not oil.

Check the tightness of all screws once in a while, and if necessary use #242 LocTite on them, especially module screws. It's all pretty simple really.

The other best thing you can do is shoot your equipment year round and get to know how it works. Play with it. Tear it down and throw it on a pile, then put it back together and start all over again. I call this frustrating fun. Seriously, I'm always changing stuff just to play.

Hope this helps.

[98Redline]

Take a sharp pencil (mechanical pencils work best) and draw a line on your cams where the string crosses them (draw a line on both sides of the string).
Take measurements of your ATA, BH, Tiller, distance between peep and loop, nock height above center shot, rest position.
Use the same pencil above and draw a line around where the rest mounts to the riser, do the same for the sight.

You can then use all of these marks to determine if your bow has changed from it's optimum tune. String and cable stretch will become apparent as the lines on the cams will no longer line up with the string, etc....

and as Mr. Fisher said, a quality aftermarket string is an absoloute must!